


under the knife

by ncfan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Gen, POV Female Character, Planet Naboo (Star Wars), Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 12:39:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5785645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a knife poised over the back of her neck. Sosha cannot see it, cannot grasp it, but she knows it is there. It has always been there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	under the knife

**Author's Note:**

> [CN/TW: This work contains depictions of xenophobia and xenophobic violence, and descriptions of murder.]

Sosha Nitali is born too late for heroics, or so she supposes. Queen Apailana is dead three years past, and Padmé Amidala, Queen, Senator and hero all, gone for four. The Clone Wars are done, the Jedi declared the villains of the piece, though there are those on Naboo who whisper otherwise, and if one of her own Queens thought otherwise, and felt strongly enough about it to give her life to make a point, surely, she must have been right.

This is not an age of heroes, not for the people of Naboo. The Empire is ascendant, and the Emperor one of their own—no, this is an age for whispers. Noble deeds are to be conducted from the safety of the shadows, with the dust as your only witness. Sosha considers the following children’s tale (presented in truncated form) quite instructive:

Two children are taking meals their mother made to their ailing grandmother, who lives on the other side of a dense forest from them. All goes well with their journey until they reach the river that so cleanly bisects the forest. There, in the only place where the river is shallow enough for them to cross without being swept away, is a krayt dragon, fast asleep.

“What are we to do about this?” one child asks the other.

“I say we drive it off,” their sibling replies, picking up a downed branch from the shore and going to confront the krayt dragon.

But the other child doesn’t think much of that plan, and tries to think of another. Finally, they spot it: a tree a little ways down whose sturdy branches stretch all the way across the river. They take the meals to their grandmother, and their unhappy sibling is made a meal for the krayt dragon.

The lesson is clear: Do not prod a sleeping krayt dragon. Sneak around it instead.

­-0-0-0-

“Are you sure, Sosha, child?”

Everywhere there is the sound of construction, of chisels and hammers and welding tools being put to work—you can’t get a single moment’s quiet study. A new wing is being added to the Theed Royal Academy, a behemoth of dull gray durasteel and permacrete incongruous next to the teal-and-gold painted buildings, meant to celebrate the accomplishments of the Empire since its inception. Sosha thinks the half-finished building looks hideous already—and doesn’t think much of the fact that they tore up the Memorial Gardens, planted in honor of those who died during the Trade Federation’s occupation, to build it where it is. The Empire does have a funny habit of uprooting such monuments in favor of their own building projects. There’s a metaphor in that, and unfortunately, Sosha knows exactly what it is.

“My grades are more than sufficient to qualify me for the examinations, Professor Atuni,” Sosha tells her earnestly. They are alone in the classroom, the professor at her cluttered desk and the student standing over it, the application form grasped in her hand. Sosha had waited until after class dismissal to discuss this; she prefers to keep it under wraps for now, while she still can. That time will pass soon, though.

“It’s not your grades, Sosha!” Professor Atuni snaps, her light blue lekku quivering in what Sosha can by now recognize as distress. She reaches up to scrub wearily at an eye, only for her sleeve to fall away from her arm to reveal a raised, purplish bruise in the shape of what looks suspiciously like a human handprint. Sosha stares at it, appalled; the moment Atuni realizes what she’s looking at, she yanks her sleeve back down and goes on, “Your grades are… good. Your philosophy is good. Your government is good. Your history…” The elderly Twi’lek’s face contorts; perhaps she’s remembering all those holovids, things she’d somehow managed to hold on to when the Empire suppressed and systematically purged from galactic consciousness all the rest. “…is good. It’s just…”

“Just what?” Sosha asks softly, pressing her fingertips lightly against the back of Atuni’s hand.

“You’re such a dear child,” Atuni replies miserably. “It would be such a shame if something…” She trails off, her voice choked.

Sosha nods. She knows her history, knows what happens to the monarchs of Naboo. It didn’t even wait until the Empire to start. Queen Jamillia is deemed too friendly to the Separatists, and is impeached. Queen Neeyutnee, always in favor of diplomacy and re-opening negotiations with the Separatists, if only the fighting will stop, falls perilously ill and retires—she dies in a hospital a year and a half later. Padmé Amidala, former Queen, rumored signer of the Petition of the 2,000, mysteriously dies on the very eve of the Empire’s birth, with no apparent cause of death. Apailana is discovered to be harboring fugitive Jedi under the roof of her own palace, and is executed alongside them. Kylantha, that seemingly docile Imperial puppet, turns out to be secretly sending relief aid to planets under Imperial blockade. She is, ahem, _invited_ to retire from public office.

The list goes on and on, of Queens (and one King, the first in decades) who did not make it to the end of their terms. Queen Vanora will be the first since well before Sosha was born to do so—provided nothing happens to her between now and then.

“I think…” Sosha pauses, measuring her words carefully. “… I think I can make a difference. Professor, I know I can make a difference. I must simply be allowed to try.”

Atuni searches her face intently, worrying at her lip with filed teeth as she does so. Finally, she sighs and holds out a hand for the application form. “Give it to me; I’ll sign it. Though I don’t know what good _my_ signature is going to do you,” Atuni adds in a mutter. She is the only non-human faculty member left at the Royal Academy, indeed, the only non-human left on the campus at all, asides from certain members of the janitorial staff. She is barred from attending commencement ceremonies, faculty dinners, and all other functions at which faculty are expected to attend; her name is not even on the roster. But still, Sosha asked, and Atuni signs, _‘Dr. Siva Atuni, Professor of Nabooan history_.’

Out in the hall, something of a crowd has gathered by one of the indoor fountains. Sosha frowns, concerned, and makes her way over to the fountain. One of her classmates, a girl named Padmé Utu (there are a slew of girls named Padmé at school, and Padma and Padmini and Mida and Dalé, and boys named Amida and Dalaa, and some girls named Aila and Lané for Queen Apailana, Martyr Queen) is sitting by the fountain, crying her eyes out as her back is sprayed with water. Her friends hover around her, trying in vain to comfort her, while a ring of other students wait in the wings, their faces registering a mix of sympathy and fear.

Sosha taps one of these outliers on the shoulder, whispering to her, “What’s going on? What’s happened to Padmé?”

“She just got word from home,” her schoolmate whispers in a tremulous voice. “Her mother’s vanished.”

Sosha grimaces, gathering the situation immediately. Lady Utu is—or, more likely, _was_ —a prominent dissident in the northwest of Naboo. One who had of late been growing quite vocal in her dissatisfaction with the Empire.

The Utus are wealthy, but Lady Utu’s wealth did not save her. There is nothing that can once you have been sanctioned; that is what it means to live under the knife.

_I will change that. However I can, I will protect them._

-0-0-0-

The examinations to determine whether the entrants have a mind and disposition worthy of Naboo’s ruler last a little over a month. Sosha enters alongside sixteen other hopefuls, a record low, though the number of entrants had been on the decline for years. Five pass, and only two choose to go on to run for election. Sosha has little difficulty in winning out over her opponent, a nervous young girl whom Sosha frankly suspects was forced into running by her family, for she shows no enthusiasm whatsoever.

The next year and a half is instructive. Sosha sits as Soruna, Princess of Theed, a position that, while it does contain some practical political power, is primarily engineered to allow her close contact with the Queen. She learns a Queen’s graces—how to discern truth from lies, how to smile in trying circumstances, how to remain poised in times of crisis, how to pass judgment on the unjust, how to lie with a straight face and in such a way that it could not be counted as a lie at all. She learns how to say much and promise nothing; she learns how to say little and promise everything in sparse words.

Sosha supposes herself ready to oppose the Empire. She has no intention of throwing in with the Rebellion (knowledge of which may be suppressed, but a Queen does have resources, after all), nor of doing anything that could cost Naboo its place in the Senate, the only voice it has. That way leads to blockades and starvation for Naboo’s people and Queen Soruna’s own death. But there are plans she intends to implement, plans that will be considered the folly of a soft-hearted young Queen, but not treasonous. She hopes.

Then, two things happen.

The week before Sosha is crowned and formally installed as Queen, the Imperial Senate is formally dissolved, the Moffs given unilateral authority over their sectors. No longer can Naboo lobby for reform in the Senate, but must appeal to its Moff instead, and Sosha knows well that the Moffs are little more than the Emperor’s mouthpieces. This is enough of a stumbling block to reform, but what comes next is worse. Far worse.

If the Emperor had ever hoped to keep his Death Star a secret from the galaxy at large, that plan must have fallen apart quickly. Over the last nineteen years, whole worlds have been strip-mined to provide materials for the construction of that massive space station. But no one ever knew what exactly it was supposed to do. Until now.

The preliminary reports are too confused to be truly useful. They don’t seem to know what’s happened; all they really say is that a massive asteroid field has appeared suddenly in orbit around Alderaan. Later reports deliver the true news to a horrified royal court and a white-lipped Queen Soruna. Alderaan, jewel of the Core, prominent power player in galactic politics, peaceful and unarmed, is gone. That metal leviathan, the Death Star, possesses a weapon so terrible that, when fired, it blasted Alderaan apart like a shuura fruit shot with a child’s toy blaster, killing every living being on the surface. All because their senator, Princess Leia Organa, was suspected of being a member of the Rebel Alliance. For that, they have destroyed a planet home to two billion.

“Your Highness, surely you see that you cannot go ahead with your reforms,” Adité exclaims the moment the door to the Queen’s chambers slips shut. Sosha’s other handmaidens add their own voices to the mix, and most are of the same opinion as Adité.

“And why must I abandon all plans of reform?” Sosha asks them all tiredly as she sits down at her vanity, sinking into the over-stuffed plush cushions of her chair. She washes the ceremonial paint from her face with a white cloth soaked in _mitalin_ ; a moment later, Ivané steps forward and begins to gently remove the pins holding her elaborate hairpiece in place.

There comes from behind her the sound of swishing mirror silk, someone shifting their weight from foot to foot. “The Empire shows its taste for brutality,” Adité protests, “so clearly that the whole galaxy must hold its breath, and you ask that? If it’s a bloodbath the Emperor wants, Naboo may be his next target anyways, but your Highness, with even the slightest provocation, he might…” She breaks off, making a strangled noise in her throat.

“The Emperor is deeply invested in eradicating all traces of his past.” Nidassa’s dry voice cracks the air like a whip. She was Queen Vanora’s handmaiden, originally. The official reason for her continued service in Soruna’s retinue is to supervise the new Queen’s young, relatively inexperienced handmaidens. Unofficially, it has become common practice to retain as many of a former Queen’s handmaidens as wish to stay, ever since Apailana’s handmaidens (those who survived the assault on the old palace and the subsequent slew of executions) all disappeared not long after her death. The rest of Vanora’s handmaidens elected to stay with their mistress. “There are now few,” she goes on, “who know that he was ever Chancellor, or Senator. But he cannot hide the fact that he is linked to Naboo, and for that, he hates this world as he hates no others. If you give him even the barest of pretexts to finally cut ties, I am afraid he might take it.”

Ivané is done removing the hairpiece. Sosha sighs and turns to look at them all.

In private, her handmaidens have all lowered their hoods from their heads. Where once they would nearly all have borne their Queen some resemblance, and one or two enough to be her twins, it is now verboten for a Queen of Naboo to have decoys. She may not enjoy that protection any longer. The faces Sosha stares at are all full of fear, though some set with defiance as well. She can guess what they’re thinking— _If Alderaan was not safe, Naboo dances on the razor’s edge._

She smiles grimly at them. “Well, my friends, I will have to wait to come to any decision until after I have spoken to the Emperor himself.”

-0-0-0-

One can always tell when the Emperor has bene to Theed or scheduled a visit, for the city is permeated with the sour stench of fear for weeks before and afterwards. Herself, Sosha has only once before laid eyes on the Emperor in the flesh, when as a small child she attended the coronation of Queen Vestaru (found dead in her bed two years later) with her parents. He had sat in a balcony high above the rest of the spectators, high above the Queen, who was supposed to stand highest at her coronation. Dark, shrouded figure, flanked by four masked, red-cowled guards, Sosha had thought him a demon come to snatch them away and trembled through the whole ceremony, and had only learned the truth later.

The Emperor had not been physically present at Sosha’s own coronation. Instead, a crackling blue holographic image of a shrouded man sat in the highest seat, surveying all in silence. This will be the first time Sosha has spoken to him as Queen.

There is a room in the new palace designed just for such meetings. _“There you will go and present yourself formally to the Emperor,”_ Vanora told her once, pointing to a small door off to the side of the throne room. _“In that room, you will be nothing more than a speck of dust, but you must still conduct yourself as a Queen.”_

Queen Soruna enters this room, Adité and Rani following just behind—and she is only permitted to have two of her handmaidens accompany her out of deference to tradition. The room is pitch-dark, either without the wide, tall windows common to Theed architecture, or with windows with light-cancellers affixed. Sosha stands in the dark, one of her handmaidens fidgeting nervously behind her, and only the lessons on etiquette and proper posture she learned before becoming Queen prevent her from doing the same.

Then, high above, a ghostly white light flips on, illuminating a tall dais, so high that Sosha must crane her head to look at the top. At the summit sits the Emperor in a tall, black-cushioned throne whose arms and back gleam dull silver. On either side of this throne stand two red-clad guards.

Sosha strides forward until she reaches the foot of the dais. There, she gets down on both knees, and bows her head low (Her hairpiece shifts, but mercifully stays firmly attached). “We are his Imperial Majesty’s loyal subject,” she intones, “and are most pleased to welcome him to Naboo.”

“And I am pleased to see this fair world thriving so,” comes the reply, in a dry, rattling voice that makes the hairs on the back of Sosha’s neck stand up. Her mind is drawn, irresistibly, to a report she received yesterday, of riots breaking out in Keren over persistent food shortages there.

The veda pearls sown into Sosha’s robes dig into her knees even through the stiff fabric; she feels as though she is being stuck with needles. She does not, however, shift her weight. “We are certain that all of Naboo would be overjoyed to know of your satisfaction,” she answers him, her eyes firmly trained upon the ground. “We are…” Her mind goes to Leia Organa, a woman she has never met, now leader of a scattered people. “…fortunate to enjoy such favor.”

A raspy chuckle follows this. “Rise, Queen Soruna.” Sosha sweeps back to her feet, gazing just a touch uncertainly upon the summit of the dais. “I sense you have a question for me.”

Sosha nods. “His Majesty is wise.” She pauses, affecting an anxious smile before going on, “I had heard rumors regarding your most prized battle station…”

The Emperor lets out a sharp sigh of displeasure. “How rumors fly. I assure you, Queen Soruna, that if these rebels think that the loss of a battle station affords them victory over the Empire, they are sorely mistaken. They will be brought to justice.”

No mention of Alderaan. Not a hint of regret for the dead, or concern for the living. Not even a _word_.

Sosha nods, her smile frozen upon her lips.

-0-0-0-

Later, she sits by her vanity, the ceremonial paint washed from her face and her hair loos about her shoulders. Adité sits on the far side of the room (the Queen must never be alone, even when she would prefer solitude), but she seems to be in no more mood to talk than her mistress. Sosha stares at her reflection, her deep breaths fogging up the glass.

In paint and robes, her head crowned with an impossibly intricate hairpiece, she is Queen Soruna, something that transcends mortals and has all the distant grandeur to go with it. Out of it, she is Sosha, fifteen years old, with dense black hair, milky skin, a snub nose and slanted dark eyes—eyes looking rather wild around the edges at the moment. She clutches at her hair with one hand, mouth working but nothing coming out.

There is a knife poised over the back of her neck. Sosha cannot see it, cannot grasp it, but she knows it is there. It has always been there.

She knows what she is risking, and just how easily the knife could swing down, and Naboo fall off the edge of the razor. That the Death Star has been destroyed is of little consolation; these days, a fleet of Star Destroyers working in tandem have enough ordnance to render a planet uninhabitable without the aid of a battle station. Can she do this? _Should_ she do this?

Sosha thinks of Alderaan, shot out of the sky without the chance to evacuate, without so much as a moment’s advanced warning. All her people, her glory and splendor, art and music and literature and goodness, all gone forever. She thinks of those Alderaanians off-world when disaster struck, a people without a planet, so many who have lost everything and everyone in one heart-stopping moment.

Yes, she can do this. She _should_ do this.

-0-0-0-

The obvious place to begin is with the food shortages. The Empire several years ago introduced a crippling new tax to Naboo, one that Sosha now recognizes was likely meant to finance their Death Star (The fact that the tax was not halted after its completion and subsequent destruction is not exactly reassuring). Previous monarchs took a number of paths to pay this tax; the one that stuck was to export the majority of Naboo’s crops, to raise prices on foods grown on Naboo that _stayed_ on Naboo, and to levy a high import tax on all off-world foodstuffs. Theed has never really felt the strain, but then, Theed is a city of the wealthy, and the wealthy never feel the strain as much.

The import tax stays, but prices on local foods are lowered, and exports cut by twenty-five percent. A new tax is raised instead—over the past few years, the elites of Naboo, especially those in favor with the Imperial Center, have enjoyed paying virtually no property tax whatsoever on their properties; it is time for that to end. This gets some grumbling from Sosha’s nobles, but she ignores them, and eventually they concede that it is better that the people have enough to eat.

Diplomatic relations with the Gungans were withdrawn during Kylantha’s reign; while never returning to the hostility that existed before the Trade Federation’s occupation, relations have, of late, grown tense. The Gungans' primary grievance is that Nabooan forces have up to now done nothing about the stormtroopers stationed planetside regularly harassing Gungans and occasionally breaking into their homes. Sosha institutes a series of fines to be levied against Imperial military forces caught behaving unlawfully; she unfortunately does not have the authority to arrest anyone from the Imperial military, but she can at least do this.

A center for reintegrating former slaves into Nabooan society is established in Theed. Sosha has no authority to outlaw slavery on Naboo; slavery was reinstated after the fall of the Republic as one of the Emperor’s edicts, and only the Emperor himself can revoke such an edict. She can, however, offer incentives for slave owners to free their slaves and not immediately purchase more. Slavery is a blight upon Nabooan society, a crime against nature, and the new Queen soon makes it clear that the possession of slaves is not something she will tolerate in any member of her court or council.

She wishes, secretly, that she could offer refuge to the survivors of Alderaan. There, but for the grace of the gods, goes Naboo, and she would offer them a home, if she could. But the Empire has none too subtly been hunting down Alderaani survivors, and she fears that if she was found harboring them, she would go the way of Apailana, and Naboo the way of Alderaan.

She will, instead, chip away slowly at the worst of the tyrannies, tiptoeing round the sleeping krayt dragon.

-0-0-0-

They find Adité dangling from the second-story balcony of a Theed apartment building, her long skirt fluttering like a flag in the gentle spring breeze. Her lips are blue; the rope falls from her neck to reveal livid bruises. She is missing several fingernails; there is another bruise stretching from the base of her forehead to her hairline.

Sosha sits by her mirror again, her puffy, bloodshot eyes staring back at her. She knows she can’t turn back now. She can feel the edge of the knife pressing against the back of her neck, but it is far too late to turn back now. Her handmaidens no longer leave the palace unless accompanied by guards.

-0-0-0-

The years that follow are spent furtively glancing back and forth for the assassin’s knife or the crosshairs of the rifle. She edges round the sleeping krayt dragon, flinching when one golden eye flicks open, and breathing a sigh of relief when it flutters shut again. The whole palace launches into panic when news reaches them that a second Death Star is nearing completion; the whole planet seems to hold its breath.

Then there comes a morning when half of Theed has been demolished by fires and coastal cities wrecked by typhoons, and Sosha’s handmaidens break all decorum and run up to her when she climbs out of the starfighter, half of them sobbing uncontrollably. But the sun has risen and she smiles as she wraps her arms around Rani and feels them all press their arms and trembling bodies against her. The knife has gone from the back of her neck.

“Now, let us see what we can be when we are no longer afraid.”


End file.
